Sunday, March 4, 2012

Take Morality Out of the Equation...

My inspiration, the oft-quoted Nobel laureate and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman comes at you directly from the playbook of famed economist John Maynard Keynes...

In one of his latest he warns that those who would suggest Europe's woes have to do with over-spending, over-borrowing, over-enabling and under-producing have "no idea what they're talking about"... The Euro Zone's problems, according to Krugman, have to do with its common currency... I.e., its members can't print their way out of trouble... He implies that countries able to print, such as Britain, the U.S. and Japan, can run deficits and grow debt ad infinitum...

I'm afraid Mr. Krugman and I are, in one sense, very much alike; in that we reside within our own echo chambers... We're not seeking truth, we're seeking to confirm our respective biases... He sees countries with higher deficits and debt/GDP ratios than those currently suffering, not currently suffering, and says "see!"... I see Britain's, U.S.'s and Japan's printing-induced sanguinity (if unchecked) eventually giving way to spiking interest rates and desperate deficit-cutting measures, like Greece, and say "see!"...

(And of course manic money printing didn't save Latin America in the '80s and Asia in the '90s from their respective currency crises)...

Krugman would view me as mean-spirited; not willing, un-coerced, to sacrifice for those in need... I see Krugman as someone who loathes the middle and lower income classes... Someone who sees the common man as intellectually ill-equipped to make his own decisions, to provide for himself and his family... Someone so disingenuous as to display himself as the working-man's champion, while promoting more government and less personal freedom...

But here's the thing, Krugman and I (each nobly) are attempting to appeal to your morality; he calls free-market advocates "cruel and destructive", I point the same accusing finger at central-planners... In either case we're altogether missing the point... We can't base the efficacy of any given system on moral grounds... Morality is not a societal, but an individual, affair... We should simply ask therefore; what system, throughout history, has best-served the masses (at every rung of the income ladder)? And that, far and away, would be capitalism... See!!!!